Future Students:

2007

FLORENCE, S.C. – The Degas Quartet will perform in concert at Francis Marion University, Thursday, March 29, as part of the Burns Memorial Recital Series.

The performance will begin at 8 p.m. in the Hyman Fine Arts Center’s Kassab Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Since their founding at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 1999, the Degas Quartet is known for energetic performances of the classical and contemporary quartet collection.

Highlights of their distinguished concert career include appearances in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival. The Degas Quartet has performed with esteemed artists including pianist Wu Han, pianist Awadigin Pratt, cellist Steven Doane, and jazz bassist Christian McBride. In addition, the group has collaborated in concert with the Colorado Quartet, the Fry Street Quartet, and the Jupiter Quartet.

The quartet studied the standard repertoire with some of America's finest ensembles, including the Takacs, the Emerson, the Julliard, the Colorado, the Vermeer and the Cassatt Quartet. A recipient of a 2004-2005 Residency Grant from Chamber Music America, the Degas Quartet is based in Hickory, N.C., where they are featured on the UBS Chamber Classics concert series. The quartet has performed and coached chamber music at many of North Carolina's leading universities and colleges, including Appalachian State, University Brevard College, UNC Pembroke, and Davidson College.

Peters has served as Concertmaster at the Spoleto Festival and the National Orchestral Institute, and has also performed with the Breckenridge Festival and Lexington Bach Festival Orchestras. Additionally, Peters continues to perform with many of the nation's leading orchestras, including the Houston, San Diego, and San Antonio Symphonies, and the Houston Grand Opera and Sarasota Opera Orchestras.

Previously, Peters served for three seasons as principal second violin of the Houston Chamber Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, Kim has performed across the U.S., Europe, and Asia in venues such as the Wigmore Hall in London, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York and in cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Amman, Jordan, and Istanbul, Turkey. She has also performed in numerous chamber music festivals. She has performed as soloist with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Guildhall String Ensemble, the Indiana University Symphony Orchestra, and the Samara (Russia) Philharmonic.

Ertz joined the Degas Quartet in June 2002. Before that he was pursuing a doctoral degree in viola performance at Michigan State University where he was also a teaching assistant.

Simon grew up in the north west of Scotland and moved to Manchester to study at Chethams and to have regular lessons at the age of seventeen. After two years there he studied viola at the Royal Northern College of Music with Roger Raphael and Simon Rowland-Jones. Simon was a member of several chamber music groups which won prizes including the Terrence Weil and Leonard Hirsch competitions. He was also awarded the Thomas Barret memorial prize for viola.

Philip is very active as a chamber musician and solo performer. Recent concert highlights include a concert with the Eastman Chamber Music Society at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, a 2001 appearance at the Spoleto USA Chamber Music Series in Charleston, and chamber performances at the Aspen Music Festival. He has performed solo recitals at the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, and the University of Texas at Arlington, and in 2000 played at the Third World Cello Congress in Baltimore, Md., as a winner of the International Masterclass Competition. He joined the Degas Quartet in 2001.